Congés d'été

L'équipe d'Anglophoniz vous donne rendez-vous à la rentrée 2010 pour encore plus d'articles sur le monde anglophone!

 

En attendant, passez tous de bonnes vacances!

Florence Rawlings - A fool in Love (AnglophoniZ n°2)

                 Do you like Duffy ? Amy Winehouse ? Joss Stone ? Well, I'm sure you'll like Florence Rawlings too, then. You don't know her ? That's really not surprising, I would say. A Fool in Love is her very first album, and it might even make her become the new soul music icon. Discovered when she was only 13 by Mike Batt, one of the best-known British songwriters, she decided, on his advice, to spend her teen years finishing her education and perfecting her musical talents. And now, here we are, ready to listen to her 12 first songs.

               Her first track, Wouldn't treat a dog, a cover of Bobby Blue Bland's song, clearly shows her passion for classic American Blues. Far from being a mere cover, she really makes the song hers, she personalizes it, so much so that it gives us the impression of rediscovering the song as if it were a kind of "refreshed" edition. The same can be said about Take Me In Your Arms And Love Me and her amazing cover of A fool in Love by Tina Turner.

But Rawlings has also created some new songs of her own that have more to do with Rock'n'Roll and Blues, such as The Only Woman In The World or Hard to get. And what a success !

But what strikes you the most is not her amazing covers : it's her voice ! It really expresses something and it is delivered with such a particular emotional intensity – just like young Joss Stone did at the time – that it just can't leave

you cold. And this shows that she’s clearly got what it takes to make a brilliant musical career.

           In a nutshell, her first album A Fool In Love largely proves that Rawlings is a star to watch. Really. For me, this 21-year-old British singer is undoubtedly the discovery of 2010, that's for sure.

Laura Waldvogel

" Nine " by Rob Marshall

Rob Marshall belonged to the theater field. Nonetheless, in 2002 he has become internationally known as a film director for the jazzy Chicago, an adaptation of the eponymous Broadway musical. Now, in 2009 (2010 in France) Marshall visits again musicals and appropriates Nine, which is also based on Federico Fellini's film 8 ½. Nine's cast is quite amazing, look at the poster. Isn't it attractive? Daniel Day-Lewis (Guido Contini) gives the line to no less than seven great actresses and singers. In the first scene, Overture Delle Donne, he faces all the women that are part of his life, namely

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  Marion Cotillard as his wife Luisa Contini,
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  Penélope Cruz as his mistress Clara,
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  Judi Dench as his friend and costume designer Lillie,
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  Nicole Kidman as his movie star and muse Claudia Jenssen,
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  Kate Hudson as an American journalist Stephanie,
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  Sophia Loren as his late Mamma and finally,
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  Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas music band as the whore of his childhood Saraghina.

Nine is set in the Italy of the 1960s and tells the story of the famous Italian director Guido Contini, who is on the verge of making his new movie Italia. The problem is that Signore Contini, at ten days from the beginning of the shooting, has no script and absolutely no inspiration . Actually, Guido is, in a way, torn between his image of an adulated director and his behavior with women and especially with his wife and his lover.

Guido has to face the production of his new movie and his lack of inspiration. Thanks to the first scene which introduces the seven women of his life we become aware of the troubles he has to deal with: he has “too many women” ! More seriously I did not manage to find an explanation to this first scene. It is beautiful indeed, and introduces the whole cast ,but what is its exact meaning? I do not know. Throughout the whole movie, Guido would sing and each female character would sing a customized act – two for Marion Cotillard - which is dedicated to Guido. These acts aim at inspiring him, at confronting him or at seducing him too where he stands either as a spectator or at the back, as if he were shy and curious to see what is happening. Each character will thus have his own style: from a pink seductive show to a provocative denouncing one, without forgetting a comforting motherly lullaby. Here you can see a little description on these numbers :

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  Marion Cotillard sings her pain at being his wife in a sober act (My Husband Makes Movies) and later sings, as if she were a temptress, her anger at him in Take It All
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  Penélope Cruz shows in a pink atmosphere the seductiveness of her character, whispering to Guido what is necessary to excite him with A Call From The Vatican
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  Judi Dench exposes her talent as a costume designer in what was the best of costumes at the Folies Bergere, the whole in a very French mood
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  Nicole Kidman does not want to be a “star” any more and most of all she wants to be herself and so sings her goodbye to Guido while giving him her last guidance to his film in an Usual Way
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  Kate Hudson plays the superficial, clothes-interested sex-emancipated American who wants Guido in her bed. Rob Marshall has written this role especially for her and has created a glamorous and rhythmic Cinema Italiano fashion show
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  Sophia Loren is the Mamma and as being dead, represents the comfort Guido needs. Her scene is likened to a lullaby entitled Guarda La Luna
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  As for Fergie, the 1920s' whore, Rob Marshall has imagined a Be Italian sandy number with chairs and numerous other female dancers. It is quite impressive an act I must confess.

Needless to say that all these shows are the fruits of his imagination, just as his mother is, in which all is permitted to fill us with enthusiasm.

There are mainly two streams in the criticism made about Nine that are in complete contradiction : a side admires Marshall, his aestheticism and camera style and an other clearly dislikes it and won't go back on the discussion. I must admit that Nine is not as great as Chicago was from my point of view. Some say that Nine lacks the unity Chicago had. It is true in a way and yet the numbers performed are conceived in relation with the personality of the character who sings it -and Guido's imagination too. I think that there is thus an explanation for this lack of unity as far each character's personality is concerned. Guido is searching for inspiration so he imagines different kinds of situations. It may be disturbing at first hand but if you considered the fact that each female character has its own personality as I said before, the director's choice begins to make sense and this lack becomes legitimate. Some others say that Nine's plot is uninteresting. I do not agree with this. Guido Contini faces a crisis that is common to men and artists. How to face the lack of inspiration? How to face a life of semi debauchery on the verge to collapse? And moreover how to face pressure when producers and public are so demanding? All these questions are tackled in the film. There may be no answers but only an hypothetic reaction from Guido.

Then, Rob Marshall has quite an extraordinary sense of aestheticism. Just as in Chicago and Memoirs of a Geisha, the photography is beautiful, he knows how to amaze his audience. In this sense Nine is perhaps more spectacular than Chicago the former involving much more dancers and the scenery being more elaborate. Marshall may have not stuck to the real Italian film industry image but he has once again managed to make a film that is pleasing to the eye. However the songs are not as well written as they were in Chicago and that is a shame for sure. They express what is expected but lyrics are not as developed ; it's not as fluent as it was in Chicago. They are mostly redundant with words that come over and over again though they can be very touching.

I will end by saying that Chicago was a jazzy, a cheerful film whereas Nine emphasizes on a more dramatic subject. The two are obviously very different and must be compared carefully. Do not be deterred from seeing it, go and make up your own opinion, or simply go and enjoy the view and the songs !

 Marie-Claire Klein

The Lovely Bones by Peter Jackson

I'm a person who loves going to the movies, sitting in those big red seats feels great! I hadn't seen a movie on a big screen in ages so this past weekend, I decided to go there and I picked Peter Jackson's latest movie: The Lovely Bones. The film came out in the US a few days ago and should be on the French screens around February.

Honestly, I still don't really know how I feel about it... I was both amazed and disappointed.

The movie is based on the best-selling novel by Alice Sebold telling the story of this young girl, Susie Salmon, that was raped and murdered on December 6^th 1973, when she was only 14 years old. After her death, she goes in this wonderful though horrific world she calls the “in-between”. From this world between Earth and Heaven she watches over her family and killer. She seems to be trapped in the “in-between” until she feels finally free to enter Heaven but for that, she has to weigh her desire for vengeance against her urge to see her family eventually heal.

I haven't read the book so I can't tell you if the adaptation is good or not. However, what I can say is that the reconstitution of the seventies looks amazing, it feels like you are really back then. Moreover, the cast is really good!

Mark Wahlberg is Jack Salmon, a dad sharing a special connection with his daughter and who is determined to find her killer.

The mother is played by Rachel Weisz. We can see that this woman is trying to cope with her daughter's death but it affects her relationship with the rest of the family.

Susan Sarandon is really good as an alcoholic grandmother who, oddly, ends up being the strength and consistency needed by the family at this painful moment.

The young Rose McIver is Lindsey Salmon, Susie's younger sister who is very curious and has suspicions. She believes her neighbor killed her sister, and she is right, but it is putting her in a very dangerous situation.

Stanley Tucci is unrecognizable as Mr. Harvey, the neighbor and killer. His behavior is obsessive and  we can tell by the way he builds perfect little dollhouses. When he catches Susie's eyes, she becomes her new obsession and he then creates a trap to kill her.

Finally, Saoirse Ronan, oscar-nominee for her interpretation of the role of Briony in Atonement in 2007 (French title: Reviens-moi), plays Susie, this little angel whose life was taken too early. She thought that life was beautiful and loved the visual aspect of it. She had just discovered her interest in photography and it is probably why her “in-between” is full of special effects trying to add suspense or just beauty to the story.

Unfortunately, I believe that Peter Jackson made a mistake by adding that many effects and that's what disappointed me. Some of them are fantastic, I have to admit, but others are very strange aesthetically speaking or even ugly. If the visual aspect was the only problem, I would not complain but, sadly, they are also useless. They don't help the spectator to understand the story or the characters better, they even disrupt the emotional bond we have built with them.

We all know what Peter Jackson is capable of, he showed that very well in his adaptation of The Lord of the Rings and that is why I expected more from this movie.


Lucie Grisey

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Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

Did you know that the best-seller of Vladimir Nabokov almost never reached our bookshelves as the author himself wanted to burn his work ? Fortunately it has been saved by his beloved wife Vera, his muse – and driver. After many editors refused to publish Lolita, it has eventually been accepted by a French editor, Olympia Press, in 1955 and in the United States in 1958.

I purposely won't give too much information, not to spoil you the novel. I hope you'll forgive my short summary. Actually Lolita is not the story of a girl. More precisely it's not entirely the story of a girl named Lolita but rather that of a man, Humbert Humbert, obsessed with a girl, Dolores “Lolita” Haze. Humbert or “H.H” presents himself as the author of his own memoir. In this way, we readers will be given facts from his point of view, from his own perspective and subjectivity. And that's interesting! The particularity of Lolita is that, actually, Humbert is in his forties and that Lolita is hardly an adolescent. She is, as he coined it, a “nymphet.” You can easily imagine how shocking it was at the time... Basically, the educated European H.H goes to America and moves in at the Hazes' and meets Lolita there. From then on, H.H will develop an obsession for the seductive girl, to even marry the mother in order to get closer to the daughter. But Charlotte Haze will soon die in a car accident. H.H, as a cautious stepfather, takes the - easy - decision to take care of Lolita and together they will drive throughout the United States. That's the beginning of games of manipulation and sexual intercourse leading to a strange relationship between the two. Eventually the story will end with Lolita taking flight from H.H with the help of another man. In short.

To put it in a nutshell, H.H seems to corrupt a young and nice girl, or isn't it rather the opposite? What would you be capable of when blinded by love ?

Lolita is thus presented as the memoir of a man, Humbert Humbert who has written “the confession of a white widowed male”, which is actually the subtitle of the novel. The foreword written by John Ray, Jr directly invites the reader in the text by telling the practical facts : who, where, when, why and how they end up. Of course it is all mockery, John Ray does not exist, and neither does Humbert nor Lolita.

Highly controversial a novel, Lolita is nonetheless one of the greatest literary work of the twentieth century. Nabokov managed to manipulate the reader and even forced him to re-read his work so as to fully understand all the tricks he has put in it. Lolita is not simply a novel, it is not an easy novel either. Lolita is a story of love, of passion, of destruction. It compares Europe and America and introduces the doppelgänger theme (indeed, there are one or two examples of doubles in the novel). Lolita is also a detective story, including clues scattered throughout the plot. We readers are detectives who are eager to collect them and to solve the puzzle Nabokov displays in front of us. Moreover, Humbert Humbert is so persuasive and gifted that we are nearly bound to love this character that decency would suggest us to hate. His “fancy prose style” as he says seduces and even elates us hence the sense of manipulation that it conveys.

Seven years later, Stanley Kubrick completed to immortalize Lolita (and Lolita) with the release of an eponymous adaptation, quite close to the novel but not as crude as the novel. As a last proof of the book's success, “lolita” is now a word commonly used that, according to dictionary, defines “a sexually precocious young girl.”

Marie-Claire Klein

Sortie du Numéro 1 d'AnglophoniZ

Nous sommes heureux de pouvoir enfin vous annoncer que le 1er numéro d'AnglophoniZ est sorti !
Vous pouvez le trouver dans la plupart des bibliothèques de l'UDS (U2/U3, Portique, Bibliothèque des Langues, MISHA, histoire, Socio, . . .), aux restaurants Universitaires Gallia, Esplanade et Paul Appel, ainsi que dans certains locaux associatifs (Treffpunkt, ADEM, AIUS, cafèt AED/AES, ADS notament).